I no longer care if I die, said Korin, then, after a long silence, pointed to the nearby flooded quarry: Are those swans?

Korin is a troubled archivist in a small town in Hungary. He finds an antique manuscript that he believes must be shared with the world, so he travels to New York City in order to get online and post it where everyone can see.

Is Korin crazy? Or visionary? Is the manuscript as magnificent as he believes? The layers of the story move from a travel agency in Budapest to a flophouse in NYC to the palace of ancient Phaistos to a small Swiss museum in Schaffhausen, as Korin seeks to deliver his manuscript to the world.